"Lace Shawl" Process Thread - pencils to final print

Its been awhile since the last process thread, but since these are always fun to make and show the steps behind the creation of art and turning them into silkscreens, here is a new one.

Note: I will be adding an archive to my site soon of past process threads (blade runner, tyto alba etc) and will include additional photos left out of the original process thread.

This thread will document "Lace Shawl" from pencils to the final print which is sized at 30" x 24".

So the image starts as a 14" x 11" drawing. On this particular image, I inked on top of the pencils which I try not to do anymore, as the paper absorbs a lot of oils from my hand and progressively becomes more and more difficult to ink. However with this image, I wanted to avoid the lightbox so the image doesn't turn out to dark as it does when inking over a backlit surface (which it did anyways but thats another story...).

Spending hours laying down additional details, at this point all of the details need to be penciled in before inking starts.

Put on some GYBE! albums and getting to work...

Here is a time-lapse video of the beginning of the inking process. Mind the post-metal tunes.

At this stage final inks are finished, though there is still a LOT of work to be done.

Around 40+ hours at this point, the work is scanned and I begin to seperate out areas.

Details.

I carefully cut the keylines for the shoreline to be placed back into the print in a different area in a different color to show the illusion of depth. I tried this in the "Tyto Alba" print and it looks excellent when done properly. The next step I will show trapping details, because I have to compensate for the above keylines to shift during printing to ensure no gaps.

Here you can see the trapping, with the brown moving into the black to cover image shifting issues.

One thing that has been getting more interesting is the layering of colors to achieve more colors via transparency. This is not a new technique nor am I the first to discover it (shoutout to Guy Burwell and Brian Ewing). Here you can see yellow, blue and the interaction between them, creating the green. With 2 more colors to play with (light brown and 50% trans grey) there are more layers to be added.

Here is the soft fade from the top to bring the eye to the contrasting center point. When you use transparencies and convert to bitmap with diffusion dither, this is a very light yet noticeable softness effect on the final print. Depending on your screen/emulsion/printing method, this may need to be tweaked. I believe Isaac @ Lady Lazarus is using 320 or higher mesh to pick up this kind of detail.

Three colors interacting, the green with the dark brown and light brown.

All layers visible at 50% opac to show all the interactions.

Next up, screens, inkmixing etc. The updates will become more and more image heavy as we get closer to release.